The Challenges In Everyone Leaves By Wendy Guerra

Cienfuegos, the city of a hundred flames and the origin of the girl Nieve - the girl named after Snow. Like her implies, she does fit in the world she is raised in. In a state that demands conformity, she is trapped between her abusive father and her cowardly mother, between her staying in her country and freedom, and most of all trapped in a world where she can 't be herself. This is the story told in “Everyone Leaves” by Wendy Guerra. The challenges that Nieve faces, although varied in nature, all deal with the topic of abandonment and the thematic statement that ultimately, the only person who one can trust is themselves.

The story starts out with the Nieve’s custody battle and her parents divorce. Here we are introduced to the family under

Her mother and her lover, both glad to her take her in to clean up and rest, but before the day’s end her mother tells her she needs to return to her father. Fully aware of the extent of her ex-husband 's brutality she still insists that her own daughter must go back for fear of prosecution by lawyers. Nieve sums up the emotional betrayal by her mother “After my mom covered me with kisses and hugged me tight, she said that if the lawyers didn 't give her permission, she couldn’t let me stay the night because she’d sign a paper that very clearly said she wouldn’t do that. Never in my life did I imagine I’d ever hear my mother say something like that” (75).This statement shattered Nieve’s hopeful view of her mother as her saviour. And with this betrayal she began the learn the true nature of man’s fear and strength. At the age of just nine, she had no trust in her parents, she only had herself. Shortly after this blow, agents of the CDR take Nieve to an orphanage disgussed as a boarding school. Her mother and father again battle for custody of Nieve, but as far as Nieve is concerned, she is an orphan. This point of view is shared by Nieve when her mom comes to discuss Nieve’s potential adoption “Norma is the woman who wants to adopt me. My mother was ashamed because she never imagined the school would ever ask her to come in to talk about such a thing. ‘How can a girl

As Nieve ages more and more as an independent woman, she faces the struggle of conforming with her country 's policies. The way of life in Cuba is captured in Nieve’s diary in various entries, such when she states “But we live somewhere between what’s prohibited and what’s required. We don’t really have that spirit of solidarity they had back in the sixties. We live hiding in our bunk beds, the one thing can all agree to love and respect. Sometimes we sleep two to a bunk, four altogether. Our wardrobes are community property. We lend each other clothing on the weekends. Nothing to bring to school is ever exclusively yours.” (114) Nieve’s experience would make her especially distrustful of an environment where people are expected to rely on eachother. While friends and family desperately try to leave the country, Nieve must pretend she is devote child of her government. Towards the end of the book, all Nieve knows seems to leave her for their own gains. Oswaldo, Alan, Cleo, and other major characters in her life all leave the country in pursuit of their future, leaving their promise of help to Nieve, but seemingly forgetting her once gone. In the last entry of the book Nieve leaves the reader with one final summary “Over here, I continue to write in my Diary, wintering with my thoughts, unable to move. condemned to be in the very same place” (254) Alone in